Lil’ Smokey

By Tres Crow

I wish I went to a Jewish school, I thought as the boys circled around. At least if I was surrounded by Jews I’d be the only gentile, there’d be something else different about me other than my dick. Maybe they’d just think it was normal, to not be circumcised. My weirdness would be generalized, instead of specific.

“Look at the cute little turtleneck,” said Hayden, the biggest of the boys, leaning in and hunting the others for some appreciative giggles.

I tried to cover my nakedness, but two other boys, eighth graders I’d never seen before, held my arms and my little hairless cock waggled in the cool air, smooth as a lil’ smoky. I was only eleven but I was so ashamed of my hairless dick. It was like missing an arm or an eyeball; it was as useless as an extra pinkie toe. The other boys circled tighter, like a pack of wolves. A clichéd comparison, I know, but that’s what they were like, wolves. Like a goddamn Jack London novel. I wasn’t even trying to cry but tears dribbled down my smooth, 11-year-old cheeks and dripped on the locker room tiles anyway.

Locker rooms were the perfect places for this sort of shit. Coaches off putting basketballs away or watching internet porn, the hardness of the tiles matched in the eyes and faces of the circle of wolves. I struggled and they laughed at my scrawny nakedness, my dripping tears.

Hayden leaned in closer and I could smell the nascent masculinity in his pores, rank, predatory, Speedstick.

“It’s a little warm for turtlenecks, ain’t it?” he said and the other boys giggled nervously and excitedly, so glad this wasn’t them, that their parents hadn’t had any high-minded issue with mutilating their newborn son’s penis. Hayden pulled out a small Swiss army knife from his back pocket, and I squirmed hard against the other boys and a small sound escaped the back of my throat, as pathetic and unintentional as my tears. I didn’t beg him to stop. I couldn’t even really speak.

The circle closed in tight and Hayden grabbed my dick in his hand. It was the first time anyone but myself had touched it, and a sizzle climbed up my gut, like a flock of birds taking flight at the same time. My balls tucked into my body. I was horrified at the indecent pleasure of Hayden’s fingers, of being held down, of being violated. My dick hardened a little. He pulled out the foreskin and placed the blade against it.

“Aww, look at the baby cry,” he said and the blade dimpled the skin. It was cool and sent another wave of shivers through my balls.

My pastor had said once that circumcision was a sacrifice the Jews made to God to prove they were one of his people. Hayden paused for a moment and all my limbs tensed and I thought to myself that if a sacrifice was going to be made, I had nothing to lose. I was eleven, and there were six of them, but I tried anyway. If a sacrifice of skin was the call of the day, it wasn’t gonna be my dick.

Tres Crow lives in Atlanta with the two people he loves most in the world. His fiction has been featured in Emprise Review, The Foundling Review, and decomP. He can be found online at his blog Dog Eat Crow World (http://www.dogeatcrow.blogspot.com).